Kemmerer City Administrator, Brian Muir, says he has learned there are interested buyers for coal fired power plants once Rocky Mountain Power announces retirement dates.

“Which is good news for us to hear,” Muir said.

He took part in a Public Service Commission hearing at the beginning of the month with lawmakers and energy companies to discuss some of these issues.

Last month Lincoln County Commissioner, Kent Connelly, announced the sale of the Kemmerer coal mine was complete.

Muir says things are moving along.

“The nice thing is,” Muir said. “They’ve been producing coal and providing it to Rocky Mountain Power Plant as well as other customers throughout this whole process.”

He says that even though he learned there are potential buyers, no one has made an official offer yet.

“The purpose of the meeting with the Public Service Commission,” Muir said. “Was to set up some, basically, some structure to how everything was going to happen, how long they have, and all those processes.”

He says they will have three different workshops with the Public Service Commission. This is to define what kind of things need to be done to give people a real chance to make it all work as a potential buyer of the plant.

He says Rocky Mountain Power originally had set August 1 as the day it would announce retirement dates. He says they have moved that to October 18 now.

“They’ve had some unknown things going on at the Jim Bridger Plant,” Muir said. “That they had to do more research on.”

He said he will be going to the Rocky Mountain Power integrated resource plan (IRP) meeting where there will be more discussion on retirement dates. He says these meetings will be in September and early October.